Quinn Hughes’ contract future has been one of the biggest talking points around the Minnesota Wild lately, and on Wednesday morning in Las Vegas, Jack Hughes offered a reminder that the dream scenario is still exactly that: a dream.
At the NHL’s Player Media Tour, Jack was asked whether winning an Olympic gold medal with Quinn at the Milano Cortina Winter Olympics last winter made the idea of playing together even more appealing. His answer didn’t shut the door, but it also didn’t push the conversation into fantasyland.
That matters because this whole saga has been building for a year now. It started when Jack said last summer that he’d love to share the ice with Quinn someday, and that comment set off the speculation machine. Since then, the idea of Quinn eventually ending up with Jack and Luke in New Jersey has only gotten louder, especially as Quinn’s future in Minnesota remains unresolved.
Last year, Jack told The Athletic’s Pierre LeBrun, “That’s the headline question, you know,” Jack Hughes told The Athletic’s Pierre LeBrun at last year’s event. “Honestly, I’m not afraid to say it.
Yeah, I would love for Quinn to - eventually I’d love to play with him. And whether that’s in New Jersey or at what time that takes, at some point, I want to play with Quinn.
But yeah, that’s the question going around. They talk all day about it up in Vancouver, you know?
But I’d love to play with Quinn at some point.”
Quinn’s response at the time was a lot more grounded. He laughed it off, said he’d obviously enjoy playing with Jack and Luke someday, and made clear that contracts and team situations are part of the equation.
“I mean, he’s my brother. What’s he supposed to say, first of all?
‘Like I don’t want to play with him, you know?’” Quinn Hughes told LeBrun.
“…I mean we have contracts and whatnot. He’s on a different team.
Would it be fun to play with those guys at some point? Of course.
I think if you guys have brothers, you guys would say the same thing, and I feel like last year was a little bit of failure. So I feel like I got things to do there.
And I know Jack loves, he loves Jersey and he’s got stuff to do also.”
The noise around Quinn only grew after he told his former team, the Vancouver Canucks, that he did not intend to re-sign when his contract expires after this upcoming season. Detroit also stepped back from possible talks when Hughes was not willing to sign an extension there. The Wild still went for it anyway, with general manager Bill Guerin sending Marco Rossi, Liam Ohgren, Zeev Buium and a 2026 first-round pick (Adam Novotny) to Vancouver last December to land Quinn.
Since then, Quinn has already checked off a gold medal with Jack at the Olympics and helped Minnesota get out of the first round of the playoffs for the first time since 2015 last spring. He also said at season’s end that he would “definitely be open to re-signing” with the Wild.
But no deal has been reached, and the chatter has only intensified as the brothers have spent a lot of the summer together, mostly around the New Jersey area.
The catch here is simple: this is not a normal family reunion situation. Jack pointed out that Quinn would likely have to walk away from a massive payday to make it happen. Matthew Tkachuk and Brady Tkachuk ended up together after Brady asked for a trade from the Ottawa Senators to Matthew’s Florida Panthers this spring, but the Hughes situation is different.
Brady Tkachuk had a movable deal worth an annual average value of $8.2 million through 2027-28. Quinn, on the other hand, could be staring at a contract in the neighborhood of the $20.4 million AAV Cale Makar received in his extension with the Colorado Avalanche.
Michael Russo of The Athletic also noted that the Wild were willing to go $3.5 million above the $17 million AAV Kirill Kaprizov got in his eight-year, $136 million contract signed last September, which would put Quinn at a $20.5 million AAV.
Minnesota would prefer that kind of number on an eight-year deal, and that kind of money is hard to ignore: $164 million is a lot to walk away from, even for the chance to line up with your brothers. And if Quinn ever decided he wanted out of Minnesota anyway, the Devils would still have to figure out both the trade assets and the cap fit. Puckpedia lists New Jersey with $32.3 million in cap space for next season, but that doesn’t make the road to a Hughes reunion simple.
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